Afghan polls delayed amid violence as bomb kills 11

AFGHANISTAN’S parliamentary elections entered a second day after delays caused by violence and technical issues as a roadside bomb killed 11 civilians, including six children.

Independent Elections Commission chairman Abdul Badi Sayad said more than three million out of the 8.8million registered voters had cast their ballots on Saturday. The biggest turnout was in Kabul and the lowest in the southern Uruzgan province.

Polling continued yesterday in 401 voting centres, including 45 in Kabul. The results will not be released before mid-november and final results will not be out until December.

Afghanistan’s first parliamentary elections since 2010 are being held against a backdrop of near-daily attacks by the Taliban, who have seized nearly half the country and have repeatedly refused offers to negotiate with the Kabul government. The Usbacked government is rife with corruption and many Afghans have said they do not expect the elections to be fair.

Officials at polling stations struggled with voter registration and a new biometric system aimed at stemming fraud, but which instead created enormous confusion because many of those trained on the system did not show up for work. The biometric machines arrived just a month before polling and there was no time to do field testing.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan praised those who made an effort to vote after they queued for hours. “Those eligible voters who were not able to cast their vote, due to technical issues, deserve the right to vote,” it said.

Yesterday’s roadside bomb in the eastern Nangarhar province struck a vehicle filled with civilians, a spokesman for the provincial governor said.